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juke joints
juke joints

Club Tay-May, Mason TN, Summer 1991

014 Club Tay May015 Club Tay May

Back in the summer of 1991, when I was hanging out with a lot of fellow UT-Martin students who lived at Gainsville just outside of Mason, a local festival gave me the excuse to be down on the Lower End taking pictures. I had almost forgotten that I had them. I even got a picture of the legendary Club Tay-May, which burned to the ground not long after. 

UPDATED: Tay-May was the big club in Mason, and had existed in several different locations, the last one being the one pictured here. Since it could hold hundreds, it routinely featured artists like Johnnie Taylor and Little Milton, and was rumored to be the place where Rufus Thomas invented the Funky Chicken! I will always be sad that I never went inside it.

At the Crossroads of Blues History in Rosedale

Rosedale figures prominently in Mississippi blues lore. It is thought to be the hometown of Robert Johnson’s woman that lived “by the riverside”, and its Bruce Street was a small-town version of Memphis’ Beale Street or Jackson’s Farish Street. What is not clear is what has happened to Bruce Street. Most of the buildings are gutted, empty walls, or just foundations. As for the juke joints still standing, it seems not at all clear as to whether they are still open for business, or if they too have been abandoned. On one set of walls was spray-painted the name “Poor Eddie.” I was wondering if he had been the owner of the building before what ever happened to it happened, but I soon met Poor Eddie, who was standing with a group of men near the only joint that looked as if it might still be in business. Eddie took it upon himself to be my tour guide (expecting to be paid a little something of course), but he reconstructed the street in my mind’s eye as he named the owners of each building and what went on in them when they were up and running. In my haste to get to Greenville where relatives were waiting for me, I forgot to ask him what had happened to Bruce Street. Perhaps it was simply what had happened to the rest of the Delta-farm mechanization, extreme poverty and people moving away. All a little sad. But I gave Poor Eddie a couple of dollars for a “cold drink” and headed on down Highway 1.